Classical Music | Baritone

Samuel Barber

A green lowland of pianos, from Three Songs, Op.45  Play

Michael Kelly Baritone
Jonathan Ware Piano

Recorded on 07/11/2011, uploaded on 09/26/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Samuel Barber was thrust into the limelight of American classical music with a flurry of successful compositions beginning in his twenties, including the overture The School for Scandal and the ever-popular Adagio for Strings. Yet, despite the great critical acclaim these works garnered, Barber was no stranger to failure. Though his talent as a composer for the voice would suggest that he would also be an inevitable success as a composer for the stage, Barber’s attempt at dramatic works was met with mediocre success at best. Most disappointing was his grand opera Anthony and Cleopatra, composed in 1966 for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House. The opera was so harshly criticized that the sensitive Barber, for the remainder of his career, plunged further and further into isolation, melancholia, and alcoholism. It was against this steady decline that he composed his Three Songs, op. 45.

Written in 1972, opus 45 is a wonderful example of Barber’s skill at composing for the voice and in setting the English language to music. The texts he chose to set, though in English, were actually translations of poetry in other languages. The first, “Now Have I Fed and Eaten Up the Rose,” is a translation by James Joyce of a 19th century German poem by Gottfried Keller. In a bleak A minor, a persistent descending motif dominates the piano accompaniment while the voice, taking on the role of the hopeless poet, wearily intones Joyce’s translation. The middle song, “A Green Lowland of Pianos,” from a Polish text by Jerzy Harasymowicz, however, is more cheerful with a lilting melodic line embellished by a playful accompaniment. Lastly, “O Boundless, Boundless Evening,” based on a German poem by Georg Heym, is an ethereal creation, reflecting the dusky hues of the landscape painted by the text.     Joseph DuBose

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